The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’s labs tested chemicals turned in for destruction by the Syrian regime in 2014, and discovered identical markers to samples taken in Ghouta, outside Damascus, following an August 21, 2013 attack where hundreds of civilians died of sarin gas poisoning, as well as to samples from two other nerve agent attacks in Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017 and Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo, in March 2013, Reuters said in an exclusive report.
“There were signatures in all three of them that matched,” a source whose identity was not disclosed told Reuters.
Those same test results were cited by the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism report in October, which also pointed the finger at the Assad regime for carrying out nerve-gas atrocities against its own civilians.
Syria has denied ever using chemical weapons and blamed the nerve agent attacks on the rebels. Russia has also been denying that Syrian government involvement in chemical attacks and expressed doubt regarding the accuracy of the OCPW reports. Moscow, like Damascus, is blaming the attacks on the Western-supported rebels.
A June 30, 2017 OCPW fact-finding mission report confirmed that “people were exposed to Sarin, a chemical weapon, on 4 April 2017 in the Khan Shaykhun area, Idlib Province in the Syrian Arab Republic.” But back then the FFM’s mandate was only to determine whether chemical weapons or toxic chemicals as weapons have been used in Syria; it dis not include identifying who is responsible for alleged attacks.
Now, independent experts have confirmed to Reuters that the OCPW findings comprise the strongest scientific evidence so far that the Syrian government launched the Sarin attack on civilians in Ghouta, which was the deadliest chemical attack since the 1988 massacres of Iraqi Kurds by Saddam Hussein. One expert, Amy Smithson, told Reuters the findings are tantamount to DNA evidence.